Hi, I'm rexelion. I've been learning programming on my own for a few years now, working on some small personal projects but nothing too big. I have experience in C, Python, Pascal (very rusty) and some very basic knowledge of C++. I wanted to get some more experience in C++ and in writing code for large projects, and, as Morrowind is probably my favourite game, I thought contributing to OpenMW would be a great way to do so, plus I have too much free time.

I already went through the Developer Checklist, used this wonderful tutorial to set up dev environment in Visual Studio 2017, built the solution without too much trouble (VS 2017 refuses to copy required DLLs into the release folder, but no problem with debug, maybe someone can help?).

I think I'll start by getting familiar with the source code, then move on to fixing bugs. Any advice is welcome.

Fun fact: even though I've been paying Morrowind for the better part of my life, I've never finished the main quest, always got distracted by other things in the game.

Welcome. Not much advice I can give beyond the material that you have already read. In OpneMW we are mostly left with bug fixing (plus a few tasks that are definitely not beginner friendly). If you don't want to do mainly bug fixing then getting familiar with Qt and working on the editor might be a better option.

If the .dlls aren't being copied into the release folder, it's because the build script runs in debug configuration by default, so you need to run the build script again with '-c Release'. Also, don't forget to use the '-k' option so that your existing build configuration isn't deleted.